Introduction: change and continuity in recent family policies

Abstract

Families have become a focal point in debates of 'new risks' and much needed 'new policies' for Western welfare states. Family policy responses to the new challenges and even the goals associated with welfare policies designed to aid families have, however, varied across countries, and there is much uncertainty about the sources of this variation and the future development of the policy field. This special issue takes stock of recent developments in the field of family policy. It brings together a range of countries that, taken together, map the full spectrum of advanced industrial countries' family policy dilemmas, responses, and intervening institutional and ideational variables. Its goal is to take a first step towards explaining the varied degrees and forms of family policy activism in mature welfare states of Western liberal democracies. The introduction to the special issue first sketches the changing nature and social roles of the family, as they evolved along with public law and welfare policies. It then presents family policy regimes which allow for a systematic account of possible intervening factors in the formulation of country-specific responses. Most importantly, the introduction provides a brief outline of plausible causal approaches to the question of family policy change and comments on their strengths and the potential hazards and describes how the papers assembled here may collectively contribute to a better understanding of what drives and shapes family policy development and how these potential causes are interrelated.

Fifty shades of freedom. Voluntary childlessness as women's ultimate liberation

“…According to Movius, the childfree lifestyle offered a woman advantages including: "[…] enough time to have a life of her own, an equal sex role status to men and a more successful career life" (Movius, 1976: 62). Clearly, changes in the cultural climate as well as social and political reforms have transformed most Western societies since Movius wrote about voluntary childlessness 40 years ago (Mätzke & Ostner, 2010). Welfare policies such as financial support to families with children, long parental leave with high level of economic compensation and public, subsidized childcare have lowered the "opportunity costs" of childbearing for women that participate in the labor force (Haavind & Magnusson, 2005).…”

Labour market integration, occupational uncertainty, and fertility choices in Germany and the UK

“…It encourages informal, private solidarity through public policies that support and privilege the nuclear family. Family policies, and especially tax structures, reflect the legacy of the female homemaker/male breadwinner model, particularly in West Germany (Mätzke and Ostner 2010). Moreover, a broad range of transfers depend on the recipient's current or previous labour market status (Esping-Andersen 1999), which prevents female caregivers from accessing key resources of social support, and increases their dependence on a (male) breadwinner.…”

Value coalitions and policy change: The impact of gendered patterns of work, religion and partisanship on childcare policy across German states

“…A growing body of literature has sought to explain the recent expansion of family policies (Bonoli, 2005;Daly, 2010;Hantrais, 1999;Henninger et al, 2008;Knijn and Saraceno, 2010;Leitner, 2010;Mätzke and Ostner, 2010;Morgan, 2013;Williamson and Carnes, 2013). One strand of this new work, which might be called the 'partisan convergence' approach, argues that parties with divergent ideological orientations have adopted overlapping policy goals regarding non-staple issues -such as family policy -due to the emergence of an increasingly dealigned female vote (Morgan, 2013).…”